Travel Outlet West Seneca

Spent the last few days in the Finger lakes region of New York. It was quite a busy weekend on the Keuka Lake wine trail. The warm days and crisp cool nights of early autumn tend to inspire people to get out and do a winery tour. For those of you that don’t live near wine country, a wine trail event, is a promotion where you buy one ticket and it covers tastings and food servings at a string of wineries around the lake. Witnessing the event from a local winery was quite an experience. Tour companies sell these events as a travel package, just like you would book a rafting trip. You get a limo and a guided winery shuttle for a day. I imagine most people finish the day in no condition to drive, so the tour often includes a bed breakfast.

The finger lakes wine country is stunning, fields of golden rod, framed by purple aster were everywhere. The wine, and scenery should be a highlight of any visit to western New York.

There are not many acceptable options for running trails in the Finger Lakes. You could run on the roads, but during a busy weekends, you would have a steady stream of cars brushing your hair back as they zipped from cottage to winery.

For our morning trail runs, we started in Penn Yan New york, which is at the north end of the finger lakes area. The outlet trail follows the grade of an old barge towpath along a creek. The creek connects Keuka Lake and Seneca lake.

The finger lakes each occupy their own U shaped north to south valley. They are about 1 mile wide by 25 miles in length. Since Seneca lake is almost 3 hundred feet in elevation below Keuka lake, the connecting creek has a significant drop as it traverses its six-mile course between the lakes. In the 1800’s, before electricity and steam engines, water power was king for milling and power to machine shops. Surprisingly sound structural remnants of the old mills line the outlet creek appearing every 1/2 mile or so . Granite cliffs waterfalls, wild flowers and small cottages also dot the route.

The only strange thing we encountered for the weekend, was the drug dealer on the trail near Penn Yan. It took me the better part of an hour to figure out what was going on. I’ll try my best to piece my conclusion together.